Jury reaches confusing verdict in Wilson Homes murder trial

After two hours and 45 minutes’ deliberation Friday, the jury reached a verdict in the murder trial of Lernard “Baby” Bonner, accused of fatally shooting Lakeisha Moses in the face at Columbus’ Wilson Homes apartments.

But Judge Ben Land did not immediately accept the verdict, which found Bonner guilty of involuntary manslaughter, felony murder and aggravated assault.

Jurors chose to convict on manslaughter instead of malice or intentional murder, having the option of choosing a lesser offense. But “involuntary manslaughter” means the shooting was unintentional, and that verdict seemed to conflict with convictions on felony murder and aggravated assault, which mean the shooting was deliberate.

Bonner was charged with felony murder for causing Moses’ death while committing the felony of aggravated assault, an intentional act.

Jurors first came back with the verdict around 4 p.m., before Land sent them out of the courtroom and consulted the attorneys on what to do next, telling them the Georgia Supreme Court overturned a similarly mixed verdict in its 2014 decision State v. Owens and sent that case back for retrial.

Land gave the attorneys 40 minutes to research the case, but at 4:40 p.m., no resolution had been reached.

A second issue was the jury’s not marking the verdict form to say whether they’d found Bonner guilty or not guilty of malice murder, though their intent to find him not guilty of that while finding him guilty of involuntary manslaughter seemed clear.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Don Kelly said the prosecution was prepared to stipulate that the jury intended to find Bonner not guilty of malice murder, but defense attorney Nancy Miller was not.

Finally Land decided to send the jury a note asking: “Was it your intent to find the defendant not guilty of malice murder but guilty of involuntary manslaughter?” Jurors wrote back, saying that was their intent.

That left the question of what was intentional and what was not, and whether the verdict was so in conflict that it could not be accepted.

After more discussion, Judge Land decided that because the involuntary manslaughter verdict was based on Bonner’s breaking the law against possessing a handgun while he was younger than 18, it did not conflict with finding him guilty of felony murder based on aggravated assault: The manslaughter and felony murder counts were mutually exclusive, and thus acceptable.

Land cited the 2015 Georgia Supreme Court decision Griffin v. State, in which similar verdicts were ruled to be acceptable if predicated on separate underlying offenses.

The judge finally read Bonner the verdict around 5:30 p.m., and set the sentencing for 10 a.m. Thursday.

The evidence

During testimony this week, witnesses said Bonner, then 17, was in an apartment bedroom with Moses and a 4-year-old girl when a gun went off, and the little girl came running down the hall saying, “Baby shot my auntie.”

The girl knew Bonner as “Baby,” and thought of Moses, 16, as her auntie because Moses so often babysat for Sakima Grier, the 4-year-old’s mother and the apartment resident. Grier said she put the little girl in a room with her other children and went to investigate. Before she got to the bedroom, Bonner grabbed her in the hall and said, “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

As she went down the hall, he fled.

When Grier walked into the bedroom, she saw Moses lying on the bed, bleeding from her face.

Kelly said the .38-caliber bullet hit Moses in the left jaw and continued on, fracturing her skull and penetrating her brain, where it lodged. She was pronounced dead at the hospital at at 10:57 a.m. July 1, 2016, after going into cardiac arrest. Bonner surrendered to police about 3 p.m. the next day.

Moses did not live at Wilson Homes, but sometimes stayed overnight to help care for Grier’s children. Grier had known Moses since the teen was 7 or 8 years old, Kelly said.

Grier that morning first discovered Bonner was in her apartment when she looked in the bedroom and saw Bonner and Moses asleep. Around 9 a.m., Grier learned the children’s daycare would be closed that day, so she went to tell Moses.

When she walked in, she saw Moses lying awake beside Bonner, who sat on the bed holding a revolver. She told him she didn’t want a loaded gun in her home where her children might find it.

She said Bonner unloaded the weapon, placing the bullets on a windowsill, and put the revolver under his pillow. Planning to take her kids shopping, Grier left the room to get them ready.

About 20 minutes later, she heard what she first assumed was a firecracker. Upon finding Moses bleeding in the bed, Grier called 911 at 9:23 a.m.

The arguments

In closing arguments Friday morning, attorneys sparred over whether the evidence proved Bonner shot Moses intentionally.

Kelly alleged this sequence was obvious: Bonner must have reloaded the gun after Grier left the room, pointed it at Moses and purposefully pulled the trigger, else the revolver would not have fired.

“That’s not an accident,” Kelly told jurors. “He pulled the trigger. Guns don’t go off on their own.”

A medical examiner recovered the bullet from Moses’ head, and police found a live .38-caliber round in the bedroom. A ballistics expert testified the bullet came from one of three brands of revolver, a Smith & Wesson, a Ruger or a Taurus. Each has a safety feature that requires the trigger be fully depressed to fire the weapon.

If the gun’s hammer has not been cocked manually, pulling the trigger requires seven to nine pounds of pressure, Kelly said. Three pounds of pressure will fire the gun if the hammer’s cocked.

“You have to intend to fire the gun,” Kelly said. “You don’t just bump it. It takes pressure to fire a gun. It’s an intentional act.”

Miller told jurors the prosecution didn’t have the gun, and much of the state’s case was based on “speculation” that didn’t prove Bonner’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt: “You can’t make assumptions. You can’t speculate.”

She emphasized Bonner’s age at the time, referring to her client as “my quiet Mr. Bonner who was a 17-year-old child the day this happened.”

Witnesses heard the couple “giggling” in the bedroom shortly before the gunshot, evidence that the two were having no dispute that would lead to violence, and Bonner afterward was reported to be distraught when he ran to a brother’s house crying, his voice cracking, Miller said.

Bonner did not testify, and did not have to, she said: “The burden of proof is not on us. The state has to prove every allegation…. Do you really have enough evidence to prove he caused her death?”

Kelly countered that a couple laughing at one point still can get into a fight moments later. “Things can turn in an instant,” he said. “One wrong word, and things can go off the track.”

Bonner may briefly have visited his brother afterward, but the evidence showed he also went to a store where the shopkeeper recalled his buying a pickle and a peach drink, Kelly said. Bonner later fled to Phenix City, where he rented a hotel room.

It was Bonner’s fault that authorities never found the gun, which he took with him and must have discarded where it would not be found, Kelly said: “He got rid of the gun…. We didn’t fail to present the evidence. He destroyed the evidence.”

This story was originally published April 13, 2018 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Jury reaches confusing verdict in Wilson Homes murder trial."